Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and chip and photomask manufacturing technologies with Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S; Jerry Chen, business and ecosystem development manager at Nvidia; Noriaki Nakayamada, senior technologist at NuFlare; and Mikael Wahlsten, director and product area manager at Mycronic. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To read part one, click here. SE: Artificial neural networks, the precursor of machine learning, was a hot topic in the 1980s. In neural networks, a system crunches data and identifies patterns.

Marketing and sales seemed to be much easier in the past. Customers simply visited a retail shop, where they could ask a knowledgeable salesperson about a product they discovered in a local newspaper. In recent years, the ubiquity of the internet and a state-of-the-art technology changed everything. Customers became prosumers, well informed about the product before the purchase. And what is even more important, customers frequently use a variety of channels: online and traditional stores, mobile apps, online auctions, price comparison websites, social media and more. Today, in spite of all the available technologies, life is more challenging for both marketers and salespeople.

Marketing and sales seemed to be much easier in the past. Customers simply visited a retail shop, where they could ask a knowledgeable salesperson about a product they discovered in a local newspaper. In recent years, the ubiquity of the internet and a state-of-the-art technology changed everything. Customers became prosumers, well informed about the product before the purchase. And what is even more important, customers frequently use a variety of channels: online and traditional stores, mobile apps, online auctions, price comparison websites, social media and more. Today, in spite of all the available technologies, life is more challenging for both marketers and salespeople.

This post is by Chirag Dhull, Product Marketing and Hang Zhang, Senior Data Science Manager, at Microsoft. Millions of people suffer from brain-related injuries and disorders every year. Being able to decode human perceptions from brain signals can benefit this population greatly. That's what inspired Stanford University neurosurgeon Dr. Kai Miller to team up with Microsoft to offer the inaugural Cortana Intelligence Competition: Decoding Brain Signals. "The brain is an electrical organ with over 100 trillion synapses, connecting more than 87 billion neurons," explains Dr. Miller.